The Definition of Dammit

On Monday I received a panicked call from Matt as he was on the way to school with the boys, "Rachel, Daniel just said 'dammit'. What do I do?" Not knowing the situation or the use, I thought we should just see how it evolved from that moment. Well, tonight Daniel tried out the word again. He just said it as we were walking up the stairs to go to bed. So Matt and I decided to have a little chat with Daniel unrehearsed. I asked Daniel if he knew what that word meant. He thought about it for a while and responded, "When you forget something, you say 'Oh Dammit' Then you turn around and you go back and get it. Then you say, 'Here it is.'" Matt remembered all the times that happened in Daniel's presence and in a moment of irony had to restrain himself from saying, "Oh, dammit." There was no debate over where Daniel picked up that nice token phrase. We told him that it's much better to say, "Oh darn," or "Oh gosh, oh gee." He seemed convinced. Hopefully, we won't be hearing from the teacher about this one.